If you've been following the debate about the course of U.S. foreign policy over the last two years you'll be familiar with the realist/idealist debate.
Realists believe our diplomacy should be ruled by self-interest, that we may often have to deal with unsavory, unlovely rulers of foreign countries who do not have freedom or democracy as guiding principles.
Idealists believe that our diplomacy should be devoted to advancing democracy abroad, by force if necessary, and that the values espoused in the Declaration of Independence are universal human rights.
The idealist frustration with the realist world finds its outlet in the hostility to French, German [and Russian] opposition to the war on Iraq (critiqued here). "France would never have gone to war" and "Russia is just motivated by oil contracts" are reasonable paraphrases of the views expressed about these countries.
I don't expect this observation to be totally original, but the realist/idealist debate appears to be a conversation between one group who are arguing positively in the sense of empirically (realists), and another group who are arguing normatively.
The other way of looking at this, I think, is that the realists may be advocating the best course of actions given the constraints we face, and the way we expect other people to act.
If you implement an idealist foreign policy, when the rest of the world behaves in a realist fashion, you might not get what you want.
It's rather cynical to suggest that other countries are nakedly pursuing their national self-interest but your own is acting selflessly. You might even observe that this is hardly the way to maintain the international friendships you already have.
Posted by robe0419 at September 1, 2004 3:24 PM